WASHINGTON: A legislation has been introduced in the US Senate on reforming the H-1B and L1 visa programmes, popular among Indians, under which the American firms looking for skilled foreign professionals are required to make a "good faith" attempt to recruit local workers first.

Given that the skilled professionals from India are the one who account for the maximum number of H-1B and L1 visas, Indian professionals followed by those from China are likely to be hit the most if the legislation introduced by Senators Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin is passed by the Congress and then signed into law by the President.

The bill, introduced yesterday, requires all employers who want to hire an H-1B guest worker to first make a good faith attempt to recruit a qualified American worker. Employers would be prohibited from using H-1B visa holders to displace qualified American workers.

"Our bill will put a stop to the outsourcing of American jobs and discrimination against American workers," Senator Durbin said in a statement. "The H-1B visa programme should complement the US workforce, not replace it," he argued.

The bill prohibits the practice of 'H-1B only' ads and prevents employers from hiring additional H-1B and L-1 guest workers if over 50 per cent of their employees are H-1B and L-1 visa holders, Grassley said in a statement. It gives power to the Department of Labour to investigate, audit and penalise abuse of H-1B and L1 visa employers.

However, Grassley argued the bill does not eliminate the programme or change the numerical cap of visas available to petitioning employers.

"The H-1B programme was never meant to replace qualified American workers. It was meant to complement them because of a shortage of workers in specialised fields. In tough economic times like we're seeing, it's even more important that we do everything possible to see that Americans are given every consideration when applying for jobs," he said.

If there are not qualified Americans, companies can use the legal immigration programmes available, "but we must return the H-1B and L visa programmes back to their original intent," Grassley said.

"Congress created the H-1B visa programme so an employer could hire a foreign guest worker when a qualified American worker could not be found. However, the H-1B visa programme is plagued with fraud and abuse and is now a vehicle for outsourcing that deprives qualified American workers of their jobs," Durbin said.

He claimed that the H-1B visa programme is currently being used by some companies to outsource American jobs to foreign countries.

"Under current law, an outsourcing company can use American workers to train H-1B guest-workers, fire American workers and outsource the H-1B workers to a foreign country where they will do the same job for a much lower wage. In fact, Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath has referred to the H-1B as 'the outsourcing visa," he said.

It was Grassley and Durbin who were mainly instrumental in the Congressional legislation early this year which stopped hiring of foreign workers by US companies receiving the federal stimulus money. As a result of this, coupled with the general economic recession, the filing of H-1B visas has dropped quite significantly.

In the first three weeks after they started receiving applications, US authorities received about 44,000 H-1B visa petitions against the Congressional mandated quota of 65,000. In previous years, they had been receiving H-1B petitions several times the number of Congressional mandated quota.

In October last year, they had released a Benefit Fraud and Compliance Assessment that highlighted rampant fraud in the H-1B programme. The report revealed more than a 20 per cent violation rate by those who use the H-1B visa programme.

"When Citizenship and Immigration Services report that there is more than a 20 per cent violation rate in the H-1B visa programme, it's pretty clear that many companies are abusing the programme and not using it as was intended. Fraud and abuse of the H-1B visa program will not be tolerated and our bill puts companies on notice," Grassley said.

"Our legislation to reform the programme will benefit American workers, while still ensuring that US companies get the highly specialised workers they need."

Grassley alleged that fraud and abuse had become all too prevalent in the H-1B programme and thus there was need to close loopholes and enact reform.

Politicians everywhere are the same - thugs. Instead of first plugging the borders and stopping illegal aliens, they are more worried about legal, tax paying non-immigrant workers! And they keep saying Americans should be given the jobs. When majority of American college graduates are into anything other than Maths, Science and Engineering where the heck do you think the required workforce will come from?

Every two bit shmuck wants to go to business school and become a 'manager' for business or a lawyer or some stupid useless courses like anthropology and such which have no real use. Check out and you will be shocked that the highest number of PhDs awarded till date in the US are for 'anthropology'.

Anyway, with globalisation a lot of work gets done outside US. Only if Europe picks up on this and introduces H1B type visa then you will see lot more software and high tech emanating from Europe.

Every two bit shmuck wants to go to business school and become a 'manager' for business or a lawyer or some stupid useless courses like anthropology and such which have no real use. Check out and you will be shocked that the highest number of PhDs awarded till date in the US are for 'anthropology'.

I knew this was going to happen some day. Australia too has been playing around with points system for PR. US has recently started this nonsense of granting OPT extension to students of STEM only (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Then you have this new e-verify system where companies not registering with US Govt agency cannot hire international students. E-verify is seen more of a way for Govt. to control and dictate who the company hires.

Now doing a MBA from US has become even more irrelevent. MBA course fees is too high, not that easy to find funding, besides, not everybody gets it. You complete MBA and start looking for a job and then you have only 3 months to find a job or leave US. American employers are not that reluctant to hire fresh MBAs, also desis' communication skills go against them. Not that comm. skills might be bad but most likely an American would seem a better option for the same job.

Rita Yamaoka, a mother of three who immigrated from Brazil, recently lost her factory job here. Now, Japan has made her an offer she might not be able to refuse.

The government will pay thousands of dollars to fly Mrs. Yamaoka; her husband, who is a Brazilian citizen of Japanese descent; and their family back to Brazil. But in exchange, Mrs. Yamaoka and her husband must agree never to seek to work in Japan again.

“I feel immense stress. I’ve been crying very often,” Mrs. Yamaoka, 38, said after a meeting where local officials detailed the offer in this industrial town in central Japan.

I tell my husband that we should take the money and go back,” she said, her eyes teary. “We can’t afford to stay here much longer.”

Japan’s offer, extended to hundreds of thousands of blue-collar Latin American immigrants, is part of a new drive to encourage them to leave this recession-racked country. So far, at least 100 workers and their families have agreed to leave, Japanese officials said.

But critics denounce the program as shortsighted, inhumane and a threat to what little progress Japan has made in opening its economy to foreign workers.

“It’s a disgrace. It’s cold-hearted,” said Hidenori Sakanaka, director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, an independent research organization.

“And Japan is kicking itself in the foot,” he added. “We might be in a recession now, but it’s clear it doesn’t have a future without workers from overseas.”